CMake does not properly find CUDA library

Question

I\'m trying to build a program that requires CUDA. To the CMake script I supply:

cmake -D CUDA_TOOLKIT_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/cuda ..

CUDA is

Answer 1

The correct way of doing this on CMake 3.17+ is to use the FindCUDAToolkit module, like so:

find_module(CUDAToolkit REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(my_target PRIVATE CUDA::cudart CUDA::cuda_driver)

The CUDA::cuda_driver target is equivalent to -lcuda when the linker would find it, and is otherwise an absolute path to the correct library. You should avoid adding system libraries via target_link_libraries to ensure portability.

---

If you have an older version (CMake 3.0+), you can use the (now-deprecated) FindCUDA module to imitate the 3.17 module, like so:

find_package(CUDA REQUIRED)

# Do what the new package does
find_library(CUDA_DRIVER_LIBRARY
             NAMES cuda_driver cuda
             HINTS ${CUDA_TOOLKIT_ROOT_DIR}
                   ENV CUDA_PATH
             PATH_SUFFIXES nvidia/current lib64 lib/x64 lib)
if (NOT CUDA_DRIVER_LIBRARY)
    # Don't try any stub directories until we have exhausted all other search locations.
    find_library(CUDA_DRIVER_LIBRARY
                 NAMES cuda_driver cuda
                 HINTS ${CUDA_TOOLKIT_ROOT_DIR}
                       ENV CUDA_PATH
                 PATH_SUFFIXES lib64/stubs lib/x64/stubs lib/stubs stubs)
endif ()
mark_as_advanced(CUDA_DRIVER_LIBRARY)
##

target_include_directories(my_target PRIVATE ${CUDA_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(my_target PRIVATE ${CUDA_LIBRARIES} ${CUDA_DRIVER_LIBRARY})

This is adapted from the official sources, here.